


If I Could Relax

by somethingnerdythiswaycomes



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Character Study, Coming Out, Gen, Internalized Transphobia, M/M, Trans Bitty, Trans Character, Transitioning, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6685636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingnerdythiswaycomes/pseuds/somethingnerdythiswaycomes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not what people think of when they think of trans men, but he’s okay with that.  Really, he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Starting Out Again

**Author's Note:**

> Some content notes:
> 
> In this fic, Bitty is a pre-top/bottom surgery trans man out for the first time when he gets to Samwell - except he's not telling them he's trans, just living as a man. He has a lot of explicit fear about getting outed. He references societal transphobia. There will definitely be more of that.
> 
> All references to Bitty before starting to transition/coming out are with his proper pronouns.
> 
> He is also forced to come out to his mom - though it is a short, summarized scene.
> 
> If you have worries/questions before reading, feel free to hit me up.

Bitty figures it out in high school.  He’s not – he’s read stories about people being butch or tomboys and figuring out from there that they’re – but that’s not him.  He did figure skating for years, before he dropped it for hockey, and he likes his short shorts and Beyonce and baking.

He’s not what people think of when they think of trans men, but he’s okay with that.  Really, he is.

He orders a binder online right after he graduates high school, and keeps it hidden on the top shelf of his closet.  Well, until his Mama’s doing some cleaning and trying to help him pack for Samwell and holds it up and says, “Erin Rochelle Bittle, what in God’s name is this?”

It’s easier to explain when his back’s against a wall.

And it means that he just has to keep it hidden from Coach, which is a lot easier, and as soon as he gets to his dorm he can pull off his shirt and bra and put the binder on, a t-shirt over it.  He stares at himself in the mirror for 20 minutes, turning this way and that, and then for the rest of the day, whenever he passes something reflective and he sneaks a peek, he looks…

He looks like a guy.  Cutting his hair shorter helped, and he never had a large chest to begin with, but now it’s just… flat.

Bitty rubs at his eyes, willing himself not to cry.

 

.oOo.

 

He hasn’t really tried to pass before; the closest was when he’d wear loose shirts and flannel and everyone thought he was a dyke.  He’d gotten beat up for that, and shoved in his locker by Coach’s players.  But he’s meeting his team – the guys he’ll be playing with for four years.

But now it’s so important it’s actually a little terrifying.  This is his team.  He doesn’t want them to go into this like _we’re playing with a girl_ and _gotta go easy on the girl_ , the way some of the guys on his last team were like.

But he – he _does it_ , he sits there fidgeting and tugging his shirt to make sure his binder’s not pulling at it, but he doesn’t even ramble that much when it’s his turn to introduce himself.

And then it’s just workouts, until they start official practice instead of just conditioning.

“Oh, hey, Bitty,” Shitty says, knocking the back of Bitty’s head with his elbow.  “Ya finally showed up to team breakfast, ya lil’ fucker!”

Bitty hunches a bit in his seat, shoulders up to his ears.  He’s only wearing a sports bra – he doesn’t really feel safe wearing a binder for their preseason conditioning, or any sort of strenuous exercise – and that’s most of the reason why he never goes to team breakfast.  He feels like someone’ll be able to tell, that they’ll see a little more of a bulge than his binder allows, and he’ll get kicked off the team. Or – maybe they’d keep him, but it wouldn’t be the same – all the looks, whispering behind his back –

“You know what I like about you, Bitty?”

“Uh…” Bitty says, trying to figure it out.

“You’re a dude from the South and you’re not a bigoted dickfaced cockhole.”

Bitty hides a smile in his oatmeal.  He’s a _dude_.

“I try, Shitty,” he says, making Shitty laugh and ruffle his hair.

“That’s the spirit, Bits!”

Bitty laughs and grins up at Shitty – and overhears Ransom and Holster talking about –

He freezes a little bit, a chill rushing through him.  He doesn’t know if he’s ghost white or blushing like mad.  They’re being so – well, he doesn’t want to say vulgar, because that doesn’t really fit, but it’s a bit more open than anyone in Georgia is.

“What do you think, Bitty?” Holster asks, leaning over Ransom to  his phone in front of Bitty’s face.  “Emoticons mean pussy, right?”

“Uh, well,” Bitty starts, swallowing around the lump in his throat.  He doesn’t know how a “normal dude” responds to something like this.  He doesn’t text girls, and even if he spent a while pretending to be a cis girl, he doesn’t know how they think! And just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he knows _girl code!_ “Sure?  I mean…” he huffs a little.  “Y’all’d know better than me.”

“Bruh, that’s right, Bitty’s from the South,” Ransom tells Holster, throwing an arm over Bitty’s shoulders.  He barely stops himself from flinching away.  “They’d just use weird euphemisms and shit.”

“Shit, Ransy, you’re right.” Holster pulls his phone back at last, still frowning down at the text.  “But it’s :3.  What does that even _mean_?”

“Hols, :3 is _guaranteed_ pussy.”

“Bittle.”

Bitty looks up, his eyes widening when he sees Jack looming over him.  Jack’s eyes sweep over him; Bitty hunches over a little bit, making sure his shirt’s hanging loose over his chest.

“Y-yes?”

“Eat more protein.”

Bitty ducks his head and doesn’t say anything.  After a moment, Jack walks over to his seat next to Shitty.

And _that_ is why he’s been avoiding team breakfast.  Something about Jack’s eyes makes it seem like he’s seeing right through Bitty, can pick apart every half-truth he’s told to try to fit in.  He picks at his oatmeal, and decides he’ll have cereal in his dorm room tomorrow.

 

.oOo.

 

Bitty doesn’t know what it is about checking that freaks him out.  He’s glad that he can sort of pass it off as playing on a coed team without any checking for his entire hockey career.  But it’s more than just never having been checked.

It’s something about a 6-something-foot-tall man bearing down on him and shoving him into the wall.  It’d be a fantasy, anywhere else but the ice.  Maybe it’s part of that instinctual fear anyone raised as a girl has had drilled into them.  Maybe it’s still fear left over from his one attempt at peewee football.  Maybe it’s because that’s the one time he’s really confronted with how small, how fragile, how _feminine_ his body is, compared with all the men he’s playing with.

Whimpering and curling up into a ball doesn’t make him seem any more masculine, but at least he’s not crying like he did the last time he got his period.

At least he has his skating, his speed and agility, to keep him on the team.  And everyone’s more preoccupied with comparing him to a goat than figuring out why he doesn’t like checking.

And – Coach Murray had called him _son_.


	2. Getting Kinda Heavy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, he relaxes.

It takes Bitty almost two weeks to stop being terrified of the team.  He’d like to think that he powered through, acknowledged his feelings and dealt with them in a healthy way.  He wishes it was a moment of personal triumph.

But really, it’s that none of them will leave him alone.  Shitty doesn’t let Bitty escape from team breakfast again, even when Bitty tries to struggle out of his bear hug.  Ransom and Holster keep finding him in the library and Annie’s and studying with him.

And Jack – well.  Jack drops plates of extra eggs and sausage in front of him at breakfast, leaves protein bars in his stall, stares him down until he guiltily finishes one of those awful protein-kale shakes that Jack brings to study sessions.

Slowly, he relaxes.  Some part of him realizes that if they were going to out him, if we were going to find out at all, it would have happened when they first started sharing a dressing room and spending most of every day together.

Even his roommate hasn’t said anything, or looked at him weirdly, so he figures the team won’t.  He hopes.

Of course, this happens just in time for him to be terrified again.

“Good morning, frogs!” Shitty yells, standing on the steps of the Haus and staring down at Bitty and the other freshmen.  “You, the uninitiated of the Samwell Hockey team, have the distinct honor of entering for the first time…”

Bitty zones out, just a little, staring up at the front of the Haus.  The semester’s barely started and there’re already red cups littering the front lawn and the porch, and… a couch?  Under the tree?

It doesn’t get better when they step inside.  There’s – oh God – underwear pinned up on the corkboard by the door, a couch that might be green but he honestly can’t tell with all the stains.

“And for the  _love_ of _Christ_ ,” Shitty yells, making Bitty jump.  “Try to remember the layout of the Haus for Haze-a-palooza.  You’ll need to know it blindfolded, naked, and bitch-ass shitfaced!”

Suddenly, Bitty can’t breathe.  He’s going to have to be naked in front of them?!  In the dressing room, he can get away with keeping his under armor on until he can escape to the bathroom to change, and shove his clothes under a pile of underwear and socks in his bag so they’re not stolen during practice, like happened to one of the other frogs.  He’ll have to tell them, that he can’t do it, and maybe he’ll have to say why, and he’ll get kicked off the team, and everyone on the team’ll tell everyone at school, and even if Samwell is LGBTQ-friendly, he knows that more often than not places like that aren’t _that_ trans-friendly

He can’t stay with the rest of the frogs, and follow Shitty upstairs, when he’s panicking without a good explanation why.  He peeks through a doorway to the left, and – oh.  It’s a kitchen.  If there’s one place that’s always calming, it’s a kitchen.

Bitty intends to just sit there and rest his head on the table until he can pull himself together, but doing _something_ will make him feel better.

“I bet nobody’s cooked anything but pot brownies in you,” Bitty says to the table.  “You poor thing.  Well!”  He stands up and brushes at the back of his shorts, to be safe.  “Let’s see what you’ve got to work with.”

An entire cabinet of siracha.  Of course.

Before he knows it, he’s digging through the fridge for butter, and then through the cabinets for flour and sugar, and not long after he’s pulling a pie out of the beat-up oven.

“What the fuck is that smell?” Bitty hears from the hallway.  He freezes, bent over in front of the oven, as Holster and Ransom keep talking about his pie and… Ransom’s aunt?

He turns around just in time for them to step into the kitchen, carrying cases of beer and bags of mixers, and Shitty to loop back around with the frog tour.

Maybe this is what’s going to give him away, before he even gets to haze-a-palooza.

“Oh, hey, everyone,” Bitty says, holding the pie in front of him like a peace offering.  Or a barrier.  “Sometimes when I’m in kitchens, I just… pies appear?”

“Wow,” Shitty says, looking him up and down.  Bitty shrinks back, bracing himself.  “We’ve only been here for 5 minutes.”

“I…uh…” Bitty starts, and just grins.  Hopefully he’ll look cute enough that some bro instinct will kick in and they’ll start chirping him instead of staring at him like that.

“Dibs on the pie,” Holster says, reaching for it.

“Bro, you can’t dibs an _entire pie!_ ”

Bitty dances away from Holster and Ransom, both of them trying to get their hands on the pie.

“It’s a hot pan!” he yells, trying to get the pie down on the counter.  “Y’all’re gonna burn yourselves!”

Shitty joins in, too, and some of the other frogs, until Bitty just ducks and covers while they search for clean-enough forks and dig into the pie.

He doesn’t want to quit.  He really doesn’t want to, not when they’re already feeling like family.

 

.oOo.

 

He wants to quit.  It’ll be hard, and Samwell’s expensive, but he can’t do this.

It was enough when he was just beating himself up about it, sitting in bed with Senor Bunny clutched to his chest and telling himself that today was the day he’d take a check.  And then the coaches yell at him every time he jumps when someone skates too close, or drops like a rock when they actually hit him.  And then – Jack glares at him, usually, until he skates up to Bitty and leans down and jabs his finger into Bitty’s chest, yelling, “This isn’t a joke!  Either get with the program or quit!”

Ransom and Holster and Shitty try to cheer him back up in the dressing room, but it doesn’t really work.  It might just be the preseason stress getting to Jack, but he’s obviously frustrated with Bitty, too.  If Bitty can’t take a check, he can’t play hockey.  It’s that simple.

He gets distracted while they chirp him for not knowing _Bad Bob_ , but when everyone’s changing for the showers, Bitty realizes that the only people in more than a towel are him and Shitty.  Based on the times he’s seen Shitty around the Haus, this is downright shocking, that he’s still mostly dressed.

Shitty meets his eyes and winks.  Bitty looks away.

That afternoon, when most of the team’s at class, Bitty lets himself into the Haus and climbs out onto the roof outside Johnson’s window, leaning against the outside wall of the house.  Shitty likes to come back from his thesis class and smoke up in the Reading Room, and he’s there now, lounging in the lawn chair in a pair of threadbare boxers.

“Sup, brah?” Shitty says, letting smoke trail out of his mouth.  “Want some?”

“No, thank you,” Bitty replies, staring out at the tree in the front lawn.

“What’s on your mind, Bits?”

“A lot of stuff, Shitty.”

Shitty nods solemnly and takes another hit.  “Start with one thing, bro.  We’ll get to the rest of it.”

Bitty nods, and tries a couple times, before he gets out, “I’m worried about playing a game.”

Shitty hums.

“I don’t know what’ll happen if I get checked, and I don’t know what Jack’ll do if I mess up a game because I can’t handle a check.”  Bitty stares at the tendrils of smoke leaving Shitty’s lips.  “And – and I’ve got…”

“What’ve ya got, Bits?”

Shitty’s looking at him, now, and Bitty stares back.

“I haven’t been honest with y’all,” Bitty says finally.

Shitty shrugs.  “Everyone’s got a secret, Bits.  No need to feel guilty about it.  You’re not, fuckin’, _required_ to tell us every detail of your life.”

“But – I feel like I should,” Bitty replies.  “It’s hard when no one knows.  I don’t have anyone to talk to about it.”

Shitty nods thoughtfully.  “If you wanna tell me, bro, I’m all ears, but no pressure, dude.”

“I’m trans,” Bitty says, as simple as that.

Shitty hums.  “Cool, bro.”  Then he frowns.  “You’re okay with me calling you bro, right?”

“Yeah,” Bitty says, and it’s easier to follow with everything else, now that the basic truth of it is out there.  “I’m a guy – I’m a transguy.  I use he/him/his and I like being called bro and dude and guy and son and I’m terrified of being checked because I’m – I’m still—”

That’s where the words dry up.  He hates being forced back into the reality of his body – even if he’s getting better at dealing with it, and the binder and packer help – but it still feels too personal, too vulnerable to share with someone just yet.

“That’s why you don’t get naked in the dressing room,” Shitty says, when Bitty doesn’t say anything else.  “I wondered.”

“Yeah,” Bitty says.  “I have an appointment, next week, to start with hormones.  But…”

“Bro, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Shitty replies, and takes another hit.  “Like, you can say you’ve got an issue with something and not tell me why and I’ll just say fuck it and let it go.”

“Thanks, Shitty,” Bitty says, shifting a little closer to the lawn chair.

“Is there anything I can do to help?  With the team, or whatever.”

“I’m really nervous for Haze-a-palooza,” Bitty blurts out.  “You said – when you gave the tour – that we’ll all be naked, and I just don’t know if I can do it.   I don’t want everyone to know, y’know?  It was hard enough at the beginning to get comfortable with all y’all, and I don’t want everyone bein’ all weird around me.”

Shitty rubbed his chin.  “You chose a wise person to confide in, Bits, as I am in charge of Haze-a-palooza.  I’ll look out for you, bro.  No nudity this year!”  He finishes off his joint, leaving the smoldering remains on the arm of the lawn chair.  “Is a tanktop and boxers enough?  Or do you need more?”

“No, that’s enough!” Bitty replies.  “I don’t wanna cause trouble.  It’s more than enough, Shitty.”

Shitty leans over and ruffles Bitty’s hair.  “Got your back, bro.”

For the first time, Bitty really feels like that’s true. 

**Author's Note:**

> (if I fuck up, let me know. I'm a nb trans person and I'm trying to use my experience/the experience of others to make this faithful, but i still might fuck up)
> 
> join me in sin on tumblr @ somethingnerdythiswaycomes


End file.
